Lisa Farrell

• RMIT University

Despite significant policy developments addressing youth housing insecurity in Australia, youth remain subject to multiple housing arrangements that can lead to homelessness more than any other cohort. We focus on the housing sequences of youths, and we seek information in the order and duration of accommodation types used. We employ Journeys Home...

Recent interest has grown in the link between stock market returns and health conditions. We extend this literature to road accidents as changes in returns may affect anxiety and stress, leading to driver fatigue and distraction, resulting in road accidents. Using Stats19 administrative data on accidents, we investigate the relationship between FTS...

In many countries population ageing will increase the share of retirees in the coming years. Energy poverty is a particular problem for older people (due to fixed and often relatively low incomes and the need for additional energy due to underlying health conditions). This can have cost implications for the healthcare sector if the health of older...

Considering leading Australian Indigenous artists, we investigate the role of an artist’s gender in the valuation of artworks. Our analysis shows that male and female artists work in different media and mediums and that both sale price and clearance rate differ by artist’s gender. Building on a descriptive analysis, the statistical analysis of the...

Energy poverty is a growing concern across many countries due to rising energy costs. Energy affordability is essential for households to be able to pay their bills and adequately heat their homes. Here we consider the relationship between energy poverty and gambling. Problem gambling is an increasing societal issue in many countries. Gambling is a...

Following the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008 there was recognition that client trust in financial institutions had been damaged. While institutional trust has become an accepted barometer, less is known about who trusts the banking and finance sector. This paper investigates the individual characteristics associated with trust for the Bank o...

Albert Namatjira (1902–1959), Emily Kame Kngwarreye (c1910–1996) and Rover (Julama) Thomas (c1926–1998) are three of Australia’s best-known Indigenous artists. Each is known for one style of painting—Namatjira for watercolor on paper, Kngwarreye for acrylic (synthetic polymer) on canvas and Thomas for natural earth pigments on canvas. We estimate a...

Using sales data from 1987–2011 we investigate the role that pre-sale price information plays in determining hammer prices for Australian Indigenous artworks. Importantly, we control for the degree of market concentration as this might influence buyers’ perceptions of fairness in relation to price estimates which are provided by auction houses. Auc...

Much policy attention has been placed on enhancing individuals' financial literacy, chiefly through financial education programs. However, managing one's personal finances takes more than knowledge: an individual also needs to have confidence in their own financial management capacity. This paper examines the impact of self-confidence on personal f...

Understanding the socioeconomic gradient in physical inactivity is essential for effective health promotion. This paper exploits data on over one million individuals (1,002,216 people aged 16 and over) in England drawn from the Active People Survey (2004–11). We identify the separate associations between a variety of measures of physical inactivity...

The catalogue for art auctions conveys information to prospective buyers. We investigate the role that pre-sale information plays in determining auction prices for Australian Indigenous artworks.

A tough fiscal stance has become the norm for discouraging tobacco consumption. Tax and excise rises serve to increase the price of licit relative to illicit tobacco. Consequently, there has been a rise in black market tobacco consumption. This article investigates the degree of substitution between licit and illicit tobacco using novel survey data...

The last decade has seen significant deregulation in the betting and gaming sector in many developed countries. This deregulation, coupled with technology‐led product innovation, has seen a renewed interest in the drivers of the demand for gambling and the prevalence of excessive gambling. The necessity for governments to track the social impacts o...

This study focuses on the determinants of cigarette consumption. In particular, the impact of cigarette pack sizes on the typical daily consumption of smokers is investigated. Results are presented from a new multi-modal count data model which allows for 'pack-effects' in daily consumption levels. Our results suggest that smokers regulate their con...

The aim of this study was to ascertain whether the health of past and current smokers of illicit tobacco (chop-chop) differs from that of smokers of licit tobacco. The design was a telephone survey, stratified by state, using computer aided telephone interviewing, with households selected by random digit dialing from the telephone white pages. Sett...

Modelling the incidence of self-employment has traditionally proved problematic. Whilst the individual supply side characteristics of the self-employed are well documented, we argue that the literature has largely neglected demand-side aspects. We explore the determinants of self-employment using individual level data drawn from the U.S. Survey of...

Using data on federal elections for both the Upper and Lower Houses in Australia and the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI), we explore whether the contestability/concentration varies across elections. Our results show significant movements in contestability over time. The results also imply a smaller degree of concentration than we would expect to f...

This paper argues that preconditions for welfare benefit entitlements based on labour market prospects can be counterproductive when they create an incentive for individuals to abstain from any investment earlier in life that could improve future prospects. Benefit entitlements based partly on investments made prior to labour market entry are then...

This article seeks to establish the extent of displacement effects across gaming products. This is a particularly difficult question to address with precision. To date, many studies have looked at policy changes such as the introduction of a new product into the market to assess the severity of displacement effects. However, simple before and after...

This paper argues that preconditions for welfare benefit entitlements based on labour market prospects can be counterproductive when they create an incentive for individuals to abstain from any investment earlier in life that could improve future prospects. Benefit entitlements based partly on investments made prior to labour market entry are then...

We investigate expenditure behaviour of school-aged children using child diary information contained in the British Family Expenditure Survey. The estimates from an Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) for child expenditure suggest that drinks, sweets, books, and toys are ‘normal’ goods for children, but clothes, travel, leisure and vice products are...

This paper considers the long-run effects of BSE on meat consumption in the United Kingdom using data from the Expenditure and Food Survey. We estimate a dynamic AIDS demand system of household food consumption, with long-run effects captured via an adstock index of adverse media coverage. The results suggest that there are long-run impacts on meat...

We explore the possibility that a systematic relationship exists between employment within a particular type of contract and risk preference. We exploit a set of proxies for risk preference, whereby some of the proxies capture risk loving behaviour (expenditure on gambling, smoking and alcohol) whereas others capture risk averse behaviour (expendit...

Terrorist attacks such as the attacks on the World Trade Centre in September 2001 have generated new interest in the debate on capital punishment. It has been suggested that support for the death penalty could be higher in the wake of terrorist activity. Using data from the Australian Election Study we investigate voters' attitudes towards capital...

Spatial models of voting behaviour are the dominant paradigm in political science. Consistent with this approach, it will be the case that, ceteris paribus, voters should vote for the party nearest to them on the political spectrum. A key question is how we measure nearness or distance. We investigate this issue by estimating discrete choice models...

Modelling the incidence of self-employment has traditionally proved problematic. Whilst the individual supply side characteristics of the self-employed are well documented, the literature has largely neglected (or misspecified) demand side aspects. In this paper we present results from an econometric framework that allows us to separately, and simu...

The paper focuses on satisfaction with income and proposes a utility model built on two value systems, the `Ego' system - described as one own income assessment relatively to one own past and future income - and the `Alter' system - described as one own income assessment relatively to a reference group. We show how the union of these two value syst...

This paper examines the economic determinants of participation in physical activity by developing and analyzing a consumer choice model of participation and by testing the predictions of this model using data drawn from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS). Both emphasize that individuals face two distinct decisions: (1) should I...

We investigate the ability of expected utility theory to account for simultaneous gambling and insurance. Contrary to a previous claim that borrowing and lending in perfect capital markets removes the demand for gambles, we show expected utility theory with nonconcave utility functions can explain gambling. When the rates of interest and time prefe...

This paper looks inside the “black box” of the family and examines the determinants of inter vivos transfers in the form of allowances given to children. We consider in a simple model two main competing explanations for the transfer of money from parents to children in the form of regular allowances, namely altruism and exchange. We also extend the...

We explore the significance of intra-couple and intra -household influences on three broad types of employment contracts: self-employment, performance related pay, and salaried employment. Individuals may pool income risk with their partners by holding a diversified portfolio of employment contracts, introducing intra-household risk pooling. Altern...

This paper uses detailed diary information from the British Family Expenditure Survey (FES) to investigate the expenditure patterns of school-age children. We estimate a Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System, and find that, whilst most commodities are normal goods, sweets and toys are luxury items for children. Children of lone parents have lower bu...

We examine the ability of expected utility function ofthe Friedman-Savage type to account for gambling when consumers also have opportunities for intertemporal substitutions. When the time horizon is infinite, we demonstrate that even in intra-period utility functions have the Friedman-savage shape, borrowing and lending without gambling is weakly...

This article presents estimates of the elasticity of demand for lottery tickets using time series data in which there is variation in the expected value of a lottery ticket induced by rollovers. An important feature of our data is that there are far more rollovers than expected given the lottery design. We find strong evidence that individuals do n...

This paper estimates the demand for lottery tickets using pooled cross section data that contain individual incomes and extensive information about characteristics. One of the cross sections corresponded to a draw which was a `double rollover' – the jackpot was enhanced by adding the two previous draws' jackpots which had not been won. Together, th...

This paper estimates the long- and short-run elasticities for Lotto. It is particularly concerned with the dynamic response to price variations since, for some goods, this has sometimes been used to infer the presence of addiction. The price elasticity is identified through variation in the expected value of a Lotto ticket induced by rollovers whos...

This research is concerned with the demand for lottery tickets and uses data for the UK National Lottery that records the behaviour, incomes and characteristics of almost 10,000 individuals. Some of the data relates to people surveyed during a "double rollover" - the jackpot had been enhanced by adding the jackpots from the previous two weeks which...

We explore the significance of intra-couple and intra-household influences on three broad types of em ploym ent contracts: self-em ploym ent, perform ance related pay, and salaried em ploym ent. Individuals m ay pool incom e risk with their partners by holding a diversified portfolio of em ploym ent contracts, introducing intra-househol dr isk pool...

John Howard, the Prime Minister of Australia, began the 2004 Federal Election campaign by declaring that the election was about trust. Mark Latham, the Leader of the Opposition, agreed. This paper shows that this strategy was never a good one for the opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP). Whilst Latham focussed on Howard's trustworthiness and hon...

Geologische Vereinigung; Institut d’Estadística de Catalunya; International Association for Mathematical Geology; Patronat de l’Escola Politècnica Superior de la Universitat de Girona; Fundació privada: Girona, Universitat i Futur; Càtedra Lluís Santaló d’Aplicacions de la Matemàtica; Consell Social de la Universitat de Girona; Ministerio de Cienci...